6 ms·

If the girl is under age the photo and video are child pormography and evidence of statutory rape. Many states also require consent of both parties for a recor

If the girl is under age the photo and video are child pormography and evidence of statutory rape. Many states also require consent of both parties for a recording or it is illegal wire tapping. Why aren't these criminal acts being prosecuted?

bilbo0s 14y ago
Because ALL of the people in these videos are normally underage. Who exactly do you propose we prosecute? And for what? This is a hard problem with no easy solutions. Principals all across the nation have been struggling with it, its just not as simple as people like to make it out to be.
- asmithmd1 14y ago
  I would prosecute the people who posses and distribute the child pornography - not the victims who are in exploitive pictures and videos.
  - wmf 14y ago
    In other words, all high school students.
  - bilbo0s 14y ago
    You're misunderstanding how this normally develops. I'll give you an example. Let's take the common version. Don't worry, I'll make it short: Two 15 year old girls hang out one weekend and decide to take sexy pictures of each other. They share the photos with a few other trusted girl friends over time. Everything's ok, so far. Two months later, the girls are now "enemies". Or some girl in that small peer group, (clique), falls out with some other girl, you get the idea. One of them forwards pictures to a larger social group for the purpose of demeaning the girl or maybe demeaning multiple girls. BAM. Disaster. Photos are being forwarded everywhere. Parents are calling. Fights are breaking out in the halls, because maybe someone's brother is a hot-head. etc. Now... who exactly do you prosecute for "distributing child pornography". The girl who was victimized by the bullying right? She was the one who INITIALLY forwarded the images. Do you see the problem school administrators face?
    - asmithmd1 14y ago
      You are right; as the school administrator I am not going to wade into that he said/she said mess. But I would call the DA and tell them there is a child porn "ring" in the school. Have them come in, subpoena phone records, and have a police detective read their rights and interview everyone involved. You probably only have to do that every 3 or 4 years to keep a lid on it.
      - betterunix 14y ago
        So instead of one teenager who is embarrassed and emotionally disturbed, you'll have dozens who will go through life as registered sex offenders, constantly harassed by idiots who think they are child molesters, cut off from certain jobs, barred from living in certain neighborhoods, marked with the scarlet letter for something stupid they did when they were kids. Did the police help solve our drug problems? No, in fact, they made society worse than it had been when drugs were legal; now we have teams of soldiers serving search and arrest warrants, all in the name of prosecuting drug offenses. Do you really want to bring that sort of chaos and mayhem into our nation's middle and high schools? Schools already have many of the characteristics of prisons; let's not make that any worse.
      - Mz 14y ago
        I strongly hope we can come up with better solutions than that. The fear and threat approach strikes me as merely reinforcing the root problem.
    - akavi 14y ago
      We already have the legal concept of consent, don't we? Who's legally culpable? Whoever shares these photos without consent of the person they're of.
      - sp332 14y ago
        You can take a photo of anyone and distribute it as long as it's not libelous or commercial. Even if it's porn-y, if everyone involved is underage then it's going to be tricky to prosecute.
  - betterunix 14y ago
    "I would prosecute the people who posses and distribute the child pornography" In other words, you'll prosecute half the kids at the school. Just who do you think possesses these videos once they are released? Who do you think is distributing them?
- JoachimSchipper 14y ago
  Going after the person distributing the video seems obvious - distributing child porn taken without (one of) the subjects' consent is not a good thing.
bskap 14y ago
It's not evidence of statutory rape. Statutory rape is when an adult sleeps with a child. If two 15 year olds have consensual sex, it's not rape.
- asmithmd1 14y ago
  IANAL - In your example I think both parties could be charged with statutory rape. I don't think this ever actually happens.
- georgefox 14y ago
  I believe this varies by state and by age (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ages_of_consent_in_North_America#State_laws https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ages_of_consent_in_North_Ameri...). As I understand it, here in New York, two consenting but unmarried 16-year-olds would technically be engaging in mutual statutory rape, but two 15-year-olds could not be charged with the same crime.
  - bskap 14y ago
    The 16-year-old thing seems like a really strange provision. My guess would be that nobody in the state legislature wants to be the guy that brought up that bill about 16 year olds having sex.
betterunix 14y ago
"Why aren't these criminal acts being prosecuted?" 1. That would mean throwing a large fraction of teenagers in prison. 2. This is happening among middle and upper class teenagers just as much as it happens among the working class. You are not going to see suburban angels going to prison, at least not if the sheriff wants to keep his job. 3. Prosecuting teenagers for this will solve nothing; they will just get better at hiding their tracks, talking their way out of it, or not getting caught. In the best case, rather than the videos being released you'll just see teenagers threatening to release the videos, and then you'll just have "he said she said situations. Our heavily armed police force will not solve this problem; as with problems related to drugs, prosecutions will only make things worse.
rosser 14y ago
Yeah, because marking minors with the Scarlet Letter of "Sex Offender" for the rest of their lives is an ideal solution to bullying...

bilbo0s 14y ago

Because ALL of the people in these videos are normally underage. Who exactly do you propose we prosecute? And for what? This is a hard problem with no easy solutions. Principals all across the nation have been struggling with it, its just not as simple as people like to make it out to be.

asmithmd1 14y ago
I would prosecute the people who posses and distribute the child pornography - not the victims who are in exploitive pictures and videos.
- wmf 14y ago
  In other words, all high school students.
- bilbo0s 14y ago
  You're misunderstanding how this normally develops. I'll give you an example. Let's take the common version. Don't worry, I'll make it short: Two 15 year old girls hang out one weekend and decide to take sexy pictures of each other. They share the photos with a few other trusted girl friends over time. Everything's ok, so far. Two months later, the girls are now "enemies". Or some girl in that small peer group, (clique), falls out with some other girl, you get the idea. One of them forwards pictures to a larger social group for the purpose of demeaning the girl or maybe demeaning multiple girls. BAM. Disaster. Photos are being forwarded everywhere. Parents are calling. Fights are breaking out in the halls, because maybe someone's brother is a hot-head. etc. Now... who exactly do you prosecute for "distributing child pornography". The girl who was victimized by the bullying right? She was the one who INITIALLY forwarded the images. Do you see the problem school administrators face?
  - asmithmd1 14y ago
    You are right; as the school administrator I am not going to wade into that he said/she said mess. But I would call the DA and tell them there is a child porn "ring" in the school. Have them come in, subpoena phone records, and have a police detective read their rights and interview everyone involved. You probably only have to do that every 3 or 4 years to keep a lid on it.
    - betterunix 14y ago
      So instead of one teenager who is embarrassed and emotionally disturbed, you'll have dozens who will go through life as registered sex offenders, constantly harassed by idiots who think they are child molesters, cut off from certain jobs, barred from living in certain neighborhoods, marked with the scarlet letter for something stupid they did when they were kids. Did the police help solve our drug problems? No, in fact, they made society worse than it had been when drugs were legal; now we have teams of soldiers serving search and arrest warrants, all in the name of prosecuting drug offenses. Do you really want to bring that sort of chaos and mayhem into our nation's middle and high schools? Schools already have many of the characteristics of prisons; let's not make that any worse.
    - Mz 14y ago
      I strongly hope we can come up with better solutions than that. The fear and threat approach strikes me as merely reinforcing the root problem.
  - akavi 14y ago
    We already have the legal concept of consent, don't we? Who's legally culpable? Whoever shares these photos without consent of the person they're of.
    - sp332 14y ago
      You can take a photo of anyone and distribute it as long as it's not libelous or commercial. Even if it's porn-y, if everyone involved is underage then it's going to be tricky to prosecute.
- betterunix 14y ago
  "I would prosecute the people who posses and distribute the child pornography" In other words, you'll prosecute half the kids at the school. Just who do you think possesses these videos once they are released? Who do you think is distributing them?
JoachimSchipper 14y ago
Going after the person distributing the video seems obvious - distributing child porn taken without (one of) the subjects' consent is not a good thing.

bskap 14y ago

It's not evidence of statutory rape. Statutory rape is when an adult sleeps with a child. If two 15 year olds have consensual sex, it's not rape.

asmithmd1 14y ago
IANAL - In your example I think both parties could be charged with statutory rape. I don't think this ever actually happens.
georgefox 14y ago
I believe this varies by state and by age (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ages_of_consent_in_North_America#State_laws https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ages_of_consent_in_North_Ameri...). As I understand it, here in New York, two consenting but unmarried 16-year-olds would technically be engaging in mutual statutory rape, but two 15-year-olds could not be charged with the same crime.
- bskap 14y ago
  The 16-year-old thing seems like a really strange provision. My guess would be that nobody in the state legislature wants to be the guy that brought up that bill about 16 year olds having sex.

betterunix 14y ago

"Why aren't these criminal acts being prosecuted?" 1. That would mean throwing a large fraction of teenagers in prison. 2. This is happening among middle and upper class teenagers just as much as it happens among the working class. You are not going to see suburban angels going to prison, at least not if the sheriff wants to keep his job. 3. Prosecuting teenagers for this will solve nothing; they will just get better at hiding their tracks, talking their way out of it, or not getting caught. In the best case, rather than the videos being released you'll just see teenagers threatening to release the videos, and then you'll just have "he said she said situations. Our heavily armed police force will not solve this problem; as with problems related to drugs, prosecutions will only make things worse.

rosser 14y ago

Yeah, because marking minors with the Scarlet Letter of "Sex Offender" for the rest of their lives is an ideal solution to bullying...